Bitter Fish Read online

  Chapter 8: Player

  “You gotta be a player to get ahead. Now your boss will tell you that being a ‘Team player’ is what is important. But that is all BS. What anyone wants is somebody to play up their ego, their sense of self importance, build up that old Freudian id.” Robert pauses to suck down more beer. “That’s why bosses, are like women. They want someone on their team, building them up, telling them their great, telling them what they want to hear. And the reason you are single and you suck at relationships is you never learned this. Same reason you never get promoted, you aren’t a ‘Team Player’. Sure you are honest, good at your job and deserve a big fat raise, but you got to learn to suck up. Same with women, you are nice, kind, have everything going for you but you don’t suck up to them.”

  “So that is why I am single and in a dead end job? I am sort of sorry I asked.” I was contemplating life at the Stratford bar and grill once again. After all the weekend hiking I had returned home to an empty house and a frozen pizza. Waitin I had started to wonder what exactly was wrong with me, why I was still single. Thinking that Robert knows me better than most people, maybe anyone, I decided to try asking him. I sometimes hate it when I do this, he always has an answer and sometimes he might be right. “Well I have no idea how to suck up to someone. I never learned, I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere and was not exposed to women till I was a lot older. I missed out on all the playground stuff, all the hanging out at the pool, going roller skating, playing little league. All of it, I am a social moron.”

  “You are right about that, you are a social moron, and you have a gift for coming off as sorta scary, plus you talk way above people’s heads. Most people haven’t read as much as you and have no interest in talking about books anyway. You gotta dumb down some for most people, your boss, the next girl you take out, hell everyone…”

  “How do I come off as scary? I never do anything to insane.”

  “How bout the time you were out floating and decided to give a little demonstration in surviving on the river. Grabbing crawdads out of the water eating them, well not the best way to impress a girl. I mean that sound of you crunching through the shell, that’s pretty rough. And then doing it again! Oh, and then saying how fish under 4 inches you could do the same with and going off to catch a fish, dude my stomach was turning.” Robert pauses to finish his beer.

  I look at the bar in front of me. The Stratford once might have been a really nice place, the construction and joinery of the bar were very well done. Now it is riddles with scars from years of abuse, burn marks from cigarettes, rings where the varnish lost the fight to condensation. With a power sander and a weekend this could be a nice bar again, but with the current clientele there is no point in fixing anything up.

  “I didn’t think it was that bad, and I was trying to teach all those folks the basics of river survival, that anything is food when you are hungry. You have to be willing to eat whatever you can catch. Maybe they learned something, maybe I will save a life someday.” I am rather shocked that he thought it was bad, I know he has eaten his share of bugs and wild plants. Robert knows his way around the woods pretty well and we have shared various tips on wilderness survival.

  “Hey, you are preaching to the choir, but if people had wanted to learn they would have asked you to teach them, giving an impromptu demonstration, well it bothered a few of them. You could have just said ‘here is how I like to poop in the woods’, dropped britches and pinched a loaf right there in front of them. Probably would have had the same effect.”

  I am wishing there was something else to talk about so I look around for a bit. The usual old drunks at one end are muttering to themselves. Behind the bar a waitress in a stripper costume is serving beer, she is hot, fake rack, all put together well. A few guys with “Septic Services” shirts shoot pool. Strange these guys come here straight after work and don’t even change their clothes. If I worked for septic company I would at least change my shirt or make sure I wasn’t wearing a dirty one when I went out, some of those guys had stains on their clothes that could be mud or human mud.

  “Well, not like I was there to impress anyone. Besides, there was a royal ass on that float.” I don’t need to remind him about that guy, first and last time we let him on one of our floats. He was bragging the entire time about how great he was as a rock climber, how he was better than anyone at wilderness survival. He was really talking himself up, and was pissing everyone off. Then he went and paddled like a maniac, got so far ahead that we had people strung out for a mile. We figure the only reason he did that was he had a hot chick who had needed a spot in a canoe with him. He did his best to make sure no one caught up, and that ruined the float for a lot of people.

  “See that guy was selling himself, he was trying to at least build himself up and stroke her ego at the same time. You just grossed everyone out, and that is what is wrong with your life. You do this at work too. Somebody starts pumping up the boss, lubing the old ass up with their tongue in order to get a raise and you see it and sabotage not only their efforts but your career as well.” Robert looks around the bar before continuing . “Let’s pretend that there was a decent looking female in here. Do you have any idea how to go up and start talking to her?”

  “Hell no, but I suppose I could just show her how I shit in the woods and get it over with” I am annoyed with him now because I know he is right.

  “You could do that, and it might work if the chick was into German porn, but for the kind of women you like, the ones that have jobs and aren’t covered in needle tracks, you gotta have a better line, hell any line. And not a line like ‘I bet you’d weigh about 120 pounds field dressed’ telling a woman that is never a good idea.” Robert loves to bring up low points in my life. Once a woman told me she only weighed 120 pounds, I told her yeah, if you are field dressed. That went over like a lead balloon, I thought it was funny, she got up and walked away. But in my defense she had been really annoying.

  “Well Robert, I am sorry I asked now because I do believe you are right, but I also believe that I can’t change who I am. I am not going to stroke egos, not going to try and be someone I am not. Really I am so tired of this society that I am starting to question why I even belong to it. Perhaps it would be different if I had been one of those kids who had a normal childhood, that learned about flirting at a young age. You can’t just pull a guy off a farm and from Catholic schools and expect him to understand how all this crap works, and by the time I got out of my parents house at 18 it was more than a little late in life to be taught all of this” He has me riled up now and knows it.

  “Dude you asked, I answered, don’t shoot the messenger. Besides why do you even care? You seem pretty happy, got lots of friends”

  “I don’t know. A guy that was with my group on the last float was close to hooking up. Seems like women just look past me. Course I wouldn’t have touched any of the chicks in the raft he was working on but still it is nice to be wanted now and then.”

  “Aw come on, you get your fair share of attention, look this bartender brings you beer and dolls herself up every day for you.” She hears him talking and stops by our spot at the bar to refill our glasses. As she takes away the empties she reaches down to put the dirty glasses in the sink exposing a generous amount of cleavage “How much beer do I have to drink before you love me?” Robert asks as she walks away. “There is a good pick up line and I am going to let you have it. Consider it a gift from my yet unpublished work of funny things to say to a hot bar tender at Stratford bar and grill. But you got me thinking now, why are you still part of this society? You definitely didn’t grow up in it, don’t seem to enjoy it. It’s funny you work all week so you can go live in a tent on the weekend. ”

  “I don’t know, I sometimes ask myself the same thing. “ I sat and drank beer with Robert a while longer. I was really just wanting to get out of there. I knew he was right in everyt
hing he said about me, and found that really annoying.